


And She Teaches the Stars My Name

by Hecate



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, people being bad with emotions, road trip in space, space travel, space travel isn't boring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-17 09:50:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11849067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: Natasha leaves earth, travels the universe and learns to fly a spaceship. She might also go dancing.





	And She Teaches the Stars My Name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeste9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/gifts).



After Thanos, Tony points to the spaceship and tells her to go on a vacation. She tells him to fuck himself.

(She doesn't use those words exactly. Tony understands anyway.)

But she goes, of course she goes. It's a spaceship and space and stars. It's distance, and she asks herself why Tony himself didn't take the chance to leave it all behind for a bit, for a moment, for the time it takes to pass through the skies.

(She thinks of Ultron, she thinks of Thanos, and she knows Tony's answer.)

It's a spaceship, and the earth is safe.

(For now, always only for now.)

So she goes.

Earth falls away behind her so much faster than she expected it to.

It's calming, somehow.

~*~ 

“I am Groot,” a little tree informs her on her first day on the Milano.

Natasha blinks, carefully says, “Okay?” and waits.

It might be a pet, she thinks, or maybe an advanced toy. After Thor's stories, she expects almost everything.

The tree pokes her.

She takes a step away from it.

The tree sees it and she swears it looks sad. 

“I am Groot,” it says.

~*~ 

The first planet they go to is too much like Earth.

(Peter reminds her of Tony.)

It annoys her, the blue of the sky, the complications of the planet's politics, the bustle of the streets. It's a sight and a routine she is used to, beauty covering up strategies and betrayals. It's too much like Earth and she walked into a spaceship to get away from all that.

It's too much like Earth and somehow not quite enough.

(Rocket is a bit like Clint, like he used to be but isn't anymore.)

Gamora seems to notice.

They leave soon after that.

~*~ 

The second planet is a wasteland. It probably always has been, Drax tells her. Blue skies and blue rocks, small trees that reach for the stars, barren and fragile.

She picks a flower, grey petals that crumble under her touch. In her head, Tony comments on her stupidity, tells her not to touch the space flowers, tells her not to touch what she doesn't know.

(Like he ever followed that rule.)

They stay for a day. When Peter starts some kind of pick-up game, Gamora beckons her to walk with her, to walk away from the others. The planet and their steps swallow the noise of the game until it's just them and their feet on the ground.

“Sometimes,” Gamora says, and she sounds fond, sounds tired, “they are too much.” 

Natasha nods.

~*~ 

The next planet belongs to seafaring nations, the oceans stretching out to the horizons and further on.

There is a city on a piece of land, the buildings reaching for the stars, floor levels rising like the sea. The people, the planet’s myths tell them, dream of dancing on steady grounds.

"They got a space problem," Rocket says, points at the buildings. Snickers. "Space problem."

(This would have been Clint's line, she thinks. Or maybe Tony's on his tired days.)

Gamora rolls her eyes at him.

So does Natasha.

She likes the tiny bend on Gamora's lips when she notices.

~*~ 

They get into a bar-fight on the fourth planet.

She holds her own, of course she does. It takes more than a few planets’ distance between her and Earth to make her mess up a punch, more than space and stars to sweep her from her feet.

She takes down seven, Peter tells her. She didn't count.

(Tony would have counted, she thinks.)

Gamora took down nine.

It feels like a challenge.

Natasha doesn't do challenges like that, it had always been Clint who loved that kind of thing, who cherished the way it pushed him. 

Instead, she simply _does_.

~*~ 

Peter is alone on the flight deck of the Milano, face blank. Outside of the ship, the universe goes by.

His mother is dead, Natasha knows, and so is his father. Another lost boy, and she knows too many of them, has seen them rage and grieve and despair. Sometimes, she helped them. Sometimes, she left.

Natasha thinks of asking him if it was okay for her to sit with him. And chooses to remain silent.

After a moment, she turns and leaves.

~*~ 

There is a man behind Gamora, a man with a knife.

There is a man with a knife and Natasha reaches for Gamora's gun, pulls it out of her holster. Pulls the trigger, swift as a man with a knife striking out, easy as breathing during sunsets and combat training.

He goes down.

Natasha hands Gamora her gun.

Gamora looks at her calmly, face blank, body in an easy stance. And Natasha knows she is furious.

"She is angry with me," Natasha states later, the bar and the planet behind them, the ship eating distance and space at a speed Natasha still doesn't quite comprehend.

(Tony would love the ship, she thinks. But he would hate space.)

Peter shrugs. "She's a very angry person in general."

Natasha doesn't think that's true, at least not in the way it could be. It's not revenge or hatred or bitterness. Instead, it's the same anger that fills Natasha herself: disappointment in a past she refuses to hang on to, the practicability of the present and a promise to the future.

"She can handle herself," Peter tells her. "She hates when people doubt that."

"I don't doubt it. It was instinct."

Peter grins. "She probably knows that."

Then, he pats her back in the same awkward manner he uses around Gamora and she realizes that she _likes_ him. It could be worse. She could be in love.

~*~ 

The flight deck is empty and calm, space dark and vast around it. Natasha slides into the pilot's seat, rests her hands on the controls. She thinks of a jet miles and miles away, thinks of the voices that filled it, the banter and arguments. Wonders if it's in the air again.

Gamora is silent when she slips onto the deck. Natasha hears her anyway. “I didn't mean it as an insult,” she says. Looks at her, takes in the slightly raised eyebrow. “I didn't mean anything by it.”

Then, because Gamora still hasn't said anything and Natasha is a guest on a spaceship so very far away from home, she says, “It's a pretty neat gun.”

Gamora nods. “I know.”

~*~ 

The first space station they visit blows up two days after they land. They're still on it when it does.

Natasha is unsurprised.

They're surrounded by fire and explosions and heat, a colossus dying, and Natasha refuses to think about the insanity of being in space while the walls around them shudder and fall. Instead, she runs after Gamora, jumping over bent metal and bent bodies, the world sharp and narrowed down.

She almost collides with Peter when he careens out of another hallway, swallows a curse and checks him over, checks behind him, sees Drax dragging Mantis behind him.

“Where's Rocket and Groot?” she calls.

“Ship,” Peter shouts, stumbling when the floor beneath them rocks, catching himself with a hand against a wall.

Ahead of them, Gamora stops. 

Peter frowns, looks at Natasha before they walk up to her. The hallway in front of them is filled with people. Workers, if their clothes are anything to go by, whole families that lived on the station, that will die on the station now.

Peter sighs. “Well, shit.”

“Rocket, hail the ships. Tell them they need to take a few more passengers,” Gamora says, and her voice is entirely calm.

Rocket's voice is tinny in Natasha's ear but she can hear how appalled he is by Gamora's order. “The fleeing ships?”

“Yes,” Gamora replies. “Those.”

“And find some extra space on the Milano,” Natasha adds.

~*~ 

It's not just them on the ship for a few days.

They saved a family and a young woman. The Milano wasn't made for this.

The woman is mourning for her family, her grief painting her face and bending her body. The couple worries about what is to come, where to find work, where to find a home. The children run through the ship and hurt themselves, the Milano too sharp and too chaotic for their hands and feet.

After they leave, the ship feels silent. Natasha breathes deeply.

~*~ 

The sixth planet was torn apart by Thanos.

There is nothing blue in its ruins and ashes, nothing blue in the sky.

“Are there many planets like this?” she asks.

Peter shrugs. “Who’s counting?”

“I do,” Gamora says. “Whenever we come across one of them.”

Natasha nods, thinks she might stop counting the other planets, the ones that are whole and unbroken. Thinks, _one_.

~*~ 

An empty planet with nights without darkness stretches out all around them, the moons orbiting so close it feels as if Natasha would only have to go en pointe to touch them. Instead, she is helping Rocket to build a bomb.

"Peter doesn't let me do it on the ship," Rocket had said some hours before, as if that was some kind of explanation.

Natasha had stared at him.

"Also, the planet is boring and the repairs will take a while," he had added.

She had said yes then because space is still space but the planet is just rocks plus the crater the Milano created when they slipped down in the slowest crash landing ever.

Now, she pulls at wires and pushes at parts and Rocket sits beside her, making the most inane comments. It's almost familiar. But the ground is pink, and Rocket is a talking raccoon, and there is a little tree that keeps on repeating its name running around them.

Gamora is watching them from a distance.

~*~ 

Gamora is beautiful.

It's something that Natasha didn't see during the first few days of travelling with her and the others, too overwhelmed by the stars and the ship and the knowledge of space all around her.

But space isn't new anymore even though it's unfamiliar, and she knows the spaceship well enough to walk through it with her eyes closed, stepping through the mess Rocket tends to leave behind and ducking beneath the lowest parts of the hull. 

These days, she sees more than the beauty of the universe opening up for her. She sees beauty in the way Gamora cleans her weapons or walks into a room. She sees it in Gamora's steady hands and her calm eyes, sees it in her acceptance of the insanity surrounding her.

~*~ 

“I could help you to sleep,” Mantis offers after she found Natasha awake in the dark for the third time.

Natasha doesn't look away from the stars when she shakes her head. “Thank you, but no.”

Mantis leaves her then and Natasha thinks, _You're dangerous_ , thinks that Mantis doesn't understand that. And she is glad for it.

~*~ 

The planet's name is unpronounceable and so is everything on it. But the suns are beautiful and so are the moons, and the bars Peter and Rocket drag them too are less seedy than the places she has seen so far.

The food is good. It looks strange and Peter has to explain to her how to eat it, but this is familiar by now. New tastes, new smells, new rituals. She is a spy, this used to be her routine, but here and now, it's new and different.

Natasha likes it.

"This isn't for everyone," Peter says, pointing at the liquid in front of him. "It's very spicy."

She raises an eyebrow at him, reaches out. Peter lets her take his glass.

Gamora smiles slightly when Natasha starts coughing after the first sip. She almost didn't notice it.

Later, Gamora brings her a fruit, shows her how to open it.

It's sweet, the juice sticky on her lips.

"Peter has bad taste," she tells Natasha.

"I noticed."

Gamora smiles then, a real smile, and Natasha thinks that she hasn't seen that before, thinks of a garden and snakes and apples. Thinks, _I'm naked_ , and hopes that Gamora didn't notice the fatigue cracks in the walls around her. Knows that she did. Gamora is good with walls herself, after all.

~*~ 

"You don't have to come with us," Gamora points out. "You are our guest. And this is... work."

Natasha shrugs. "You didn't have to help us fight against Thanos."

"If we hadn't, we would have fought him on our own at some point. This was strategically wise."

Natasha smiles at that, nods. "Yes."

"So you don't have to come with us."

Natasha straightens, letting her hand rest on the gun Gamora gave her. "I miss this."

Gamora turns away then, walks to the others waiting for her, for them. Natasha follows.

Hours later, Rocket mutters: "Does she get a share?"

"Sure thing," Peter replies, and she wants to tell him that she doesn't need it.

Gamora shakes her head. Natasha stays silent.

"Damn," Rocket says

~*~ 

Another space bar, another space drink, and Natasha only tries the liquid out of curiosity. She has never been a big drinker, never cared about the burn of vodka in her belly or the way a particularly good wine seems to leave liquid trails on the inside of a glass.

“Peter wants people to dance,” Gamora says.

Natasha smirks. “I know a guy like that.”

“Is he successful with his endeavour?”

Natasha shrugs and thinks of Jane and Thor swaying to music in one of the Tower's living rooms while Tony calls out instructions, thinks of Clint teetering on his feet and Bruce nodding along to the music, thinks of Tony and Pepper lost in each other. “More often than not.”

“Do you dance?” and with somebody else this would be an offer, a proposition. 

A flash of memory, the bend of her arms, the pressure when she went en pointe, the wooden barre and the marble ground. “For work,” she replies.

“Do you like it?”

She thinks about an answer, thinks about the right answer, something that is true and real. Finally says, “I don't know,” and she thinks that Gamora understands.

~*~ 

The planet's sun is green, the sky is yellow, and it almost hurts to look up. Natasha keeps her eyes on the ground, on the woods and hills and rivers.

When she looks at Gamora, she sees her frozen in place, eyes at the horizon.

“Are you alright?” she asks, and knows that Gamora isn't.

“Yes,” she replies.

Natasha watches as Gamora turns away and walks back to the Milano. She doesn't go after her.

Later, after they’ve left the planet, and both the ship and almost everybody on it have settled down for the sleep cycle, Natasha finds Gamora on the flight deck. She sits down quietly in the pilot's seat, pulling up her knees to rest her chin on them, and faces the stars.

“You think you could teach me to fly this thing?” she asks after a while.

Gamora clears her throat, looks at her hands. Says, “Sure,” in a voice that sounds dry and exhausted.

“Good. I know some people who will get very excited when I tell them I can fly a spaceship.” 

Gamora snorts.

~*~ 

They wanted to visit an outpost in a remote corner of space, a colony that chose to be forgotten by its home planet.

“Best beer ever,” Peter had told them. “Close enough to beer anyway.”

Drax had nodded. “I heard about it.”

So they went.

There was not much left of the colony, not much left of the planet, just ruins and ashes.

 _Two_ , Natasha thinks.

Peter kicks some stones that might have been a building once, a home, and stalks away. Nobody follows him.

Rocket finds some of the bitter-sharp alcohol he bought a few planets ago, sits down on the ground with Groot next to him. Drax goes to sit with them. Natasha stands with Gamora, feels the nervous energy running through her, her body a tight string close to snapping. 

Peter returns after two hours.

“We need to tell their people,” Gamora says.

Rocket shrugs. “They made a point of not having a connection to that planet anymore.”

Gamora turns to look at him then, and Natasha sees the fury beneath the blankness of her face. She doubts it's for Rocket, has heard enough of Thanos and what he did to Gamora to understand. It's a familiar fury, after all.

“Somebody should know about this anyway,” she says. “They shouldn't just be… gone.”

They're silent for a while, and it's almost uncomfortable, it's a waiting game, until Peter speaks up. “So we fly by their home planet.”

“Planet of origin,” Natasha says, because there is a difference, of course there is, and it doesn't matter if you started off from a different country or from a different planet, once you put in the miles and do your best to beat your past into submission, a starting point doesn't have to be a home, anymore.

Peter nods. “Yeah, that.”

Gamora sits down then, close to Natasha, 

They spend the night between ghosts.

~*~ 

The engine growls at her like an animal, and Natasha knows that the Milano isn't supposed to sound like that, doesn't sound like that with one of the others flying. She frowns.

"Ease up a little," Gamora says as if it was easy, as if finding a spaceship's rhythm was simple.  
Natasha remembers learning how to fly jets on earth, she knows that it isn't. But it had been a useful skill to acquire, a necessary tool, so she put in the time and then, she flew.

(She never understood Tony's love for it.)

Natasha lets go of the controls with one hand, flexes it. Forces herself to loosen her grip when she is done and pushes the controls slightly. The Milano dives. She hears Peter curse somewhere behind her.

(Clint is humming _Jesus take the wheel_ in her head.)

Gamora steadies her hands and steadies the ship.

"This," Natasha says, and she doesn't look at the contrast between Gamora's green skin and hers, looks at the sky instead, "is gonna take time."

~*~ 

“The planet looked... familiar,” Gamora tells her at whatever passes for night when life is lived in a spaceship.

For a moment, Natasha doesn't quite know which planet Gamora means. But then she remembers a green sun, remembers Gamora beneath yellow skies.

“I think I killed for the first time on a planet like that.” Silence, and it's heavy with something that could be guilt, could be grief. Then “Maybe I lived on a planet like that.”

Natasha thinks about taking her hand. 

And doesn't.

~*~ 

Gamora's hand is warm on hers as she guides Natasha through the landing, steady and strong. It settles her, stills her, and it forces the ship to glide towards the planet in a graceful descent. It's a beast tamed, and Natasha enjoys this, thinks she could come to love this.

After the ship has settled and the engine has grown quieter, Natasha finally looks away from the controls and looks over at Gamora, and she _sees_ her. Gamora is smiling.

Behind Gamora, Peter is giving Natasha the thumbs-up.

~*~ 

The planet is a jungle and there are animals with sharp teeth and a poisonous bite living on it. They come after Natasha and the others, furious and fast, their skin not breakable by knives and bullets.

Somehow, they make it to the Milano. Space welcomes them back with its cold and vast arms and not one of them looks back to the green hell they just left behind.

“That,” Rocket comments calmly, “sucked.”

Drax stares at him, once more confused, and Natasha smiles slightly when Peter translates: “That was a very awful situation.”

The neighbouring planet keeps the beasts' descendants as their pets. They are stripped off their size and their colouring, sleeker and faster still. Natasha doesn't recognize them.

The bite stuns her, tears into her arm, burns beneath her skin. She stumbles and she falls, and she thinks she might die like this, tells herself that she won't die like this, and when she hears Gamora's voice at the crossroads Natasha forces herself to crawl.

Days later, Drax tells her that she almost died.

Peter tells her that Gamora killed someone to get a cure.

And she remembers Gamora sitting with her, speaking to her, her presence almost constant, her hand warm against Natasha's side, her neck, her face. Natasha remembers and she _wants_.

~*~ 

She finds Gamora in her quarters once she feels steady on her feet again.

“Thank you,” she says.

Gamora shrugs. “You saved my life before.”

It takes Natasha a moment to remember the man and his knife, to remember the weight of Gamora's gun in her hand. She smiles. “You didn't need me to.”

Gamora stands up then, grace and strength, and steps towards her. For a moment, Natasha thinks she will kiss her. But Gamora only opens the door, points towards the flight deck. 

“You'll be rusty after all this time in bed.”

Natasha thinks of flying then, thinks of the poison eating away at her, thinks of whole planets laid to ruin and rest. Leans in and kisses Gamora softly. Says, “Yeah, I might be,” and pulls her to the bed.

~*~ 

Gamora's touch is not what Natasha expected it to be. It's unsteady, hesitant, fingers following the lines of Natasha's body, stopping, withdrawing.

Natasha isn't used to a touch like this, is used to the arrogant hands of her marks, to the clever fingers of the men she found fleetingly interesting. It's confusing, at first, almost unsettling.  
She moves into Gamora's touch, baring her throat to her hands and mouth until they find a stuttering rhythm, an arrhythmia of skin and touches.

Natasha chases the scars over Gamora's body with her mouth, finds them hidden between her ribs, above her heart, at the inside of her thighs. There is a story behind every one of them, just like her own scars cover up her history, and for a moment, between kissing Gamora's neck and kissing her breasts, Natasha thinks about asking her about them. But Gamora makes that _sound_ , throaty and wild, and Natasha forgets about her questions.

It's not quite a fight between them, the push of Gamora's hips to roll them over, Gamora suddenly staring down at her with frantic eyes, bending down to nip at her shoulder, bending down to press her mouth against Natasha's, warm and solid against her lips. Natasha pushes up, pushes against her, and then it's heat and friction and the both of them slipping over the edge.

It's not quite a fight but there will be bruises.

~*~ 

In the days after, Gamora avoids her.

It's not the first time somebody has done this to Natasha.

Still, she is disappointed.

~*~ 

“She'll never make a move,” Peter tells her.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him.

He laughs. “Not like that. We heard you, thank you very much. And I bet all my music on you jumping her.”

Natasha refuses to reply.

“I mean, she'll never,,,. She doesn't know how to ask someone to be with her. Hell, she probably doesn't know if that is what she wants. She's like me in that way. So, ball on your side of the net and all that.” 

Natasha stares at him.

He grins. “I've been working with her for a while now. I'm not scared of that kind of glare anymore.”

She is almost angry with Gamora.

~*~ 

It's been months since they left Earth. It's time to see if it's still standing. After the broken planets, that particular joke sounds bitter inside of Natasha's mind.

She lets Peter plot the course but she waves him out of the seat afterwards. He goes with a smile and a nod.

Natasha guides the Milano into the right direction, laughs to herself when she sees the first bit of the way home. “Second star to the right,” she says.

Peter grins.

~*~ 

Thing is, Natasha doesn't know if she wants to be with Gamora either, has no idea how people know things like this. How desire and politics and chance can turn into _something_. It seems like such an alien concept, distant and strange.

But then, she spent the last few months in space. As far as understanding alien ideas go, it shouldn't get any better than that.

So Natasha doesn't know what she wants from Gamora. But she would like to find out.

~*~ 

Groot finds her three days after they began their journey back to earth. “I am Groot,” he says, sitting down next to her.

Natasha reaches out and traces the lines on his skin with light fingers. They feel nothing like bark. He leans into her touch.

“I know,” she replies.

~*~ 

It takes weeks to get home and spaceflight is boring. She never really noticed that before.

Gamora sits with her during Natasha's shift in the pilot's seat when Earth finally comes into view, both Gamora and the planet silent and distant.

“It's good that you have a planet to go home to,” Gamora finally says.

Natasha nods, turns to her. “You wanna see it?” 

Gamora blinks.

Natasha thinks of waiting for an answer, thinks of waiting her out. But Gamora will never make a move. 

“I want you to see it,” Natasha says. 

Gamora doesn't reply.

Natasha battled aliens and robots, she left her planet and she learned to fly. She kissed an alien who was made into a weapon. She can take one more leap and she can ask a woman to a dance.

She reaches out then, covers Gamora's hand with her own. “I know some places with low lights and great music. And a guy with enough money to make sure it's just us there.”

Gamora's face is carefully blank when she replies. "I don't dance and you only dance for work."

Natasha smiles. "Maybe it's time to change that."

Gamora looks away then, looks at the planet that slowly grows as they fly closer and closer and all the distance they travelled after Thanos shrinks again. Natasha follows her eyes, thinks _hi, there_ , thinks _home_ , and it's strange to know a planet again after all the strange places she has seen, strange to know the lines, the oceans and continents. She wonders what Gamora sees.

"Yes," Gamora says then. "Maybe it is."


End file.
